Employers often forget you’re interviewing them too
A trend: Asking potential employees for their facebook passwords. No. I don’t want to work for a nanny.
I’ve accepted long ago that there is no privacy. In this day and age, it’s dead. All you can control is the signal you put out. Now, people want to bypass that. No thanks.
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:08 am
My immediate response would be, “Sure, just give me yours first.”
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:19 am
In an age of no privacy, there will also be no shame. People won’t be able to regulate their behavior all the time, so things that used to happen behind closed doors and not be talked about will be much more open for everyone to see, and the impact of those things will lessen. Every week we see celebrities phones getting hacked into and their private pictures shown on the internet, and its not even scandalous anymore. Most of us just think “nice tits” and move on immediately.
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:33 am
I once was asked that in an interview.. My reply was that I have a life so I don’t use facebook… Apparently the interviewer did not like that comment because I was not called back to a 3 interview…
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:51 am
Nope, fuck that. If the HR douche is under orders to be that insecure, then I don’t wanna work for em anyway.
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:51 am
This has potential to go so far off the reservation that I am amazed any respectable corporate legal department would ever approve of this practice.
Maybe it is the work of some rogue HR operations looking to kill some time / fuck with applicants. After all, they get pretty used to some weird stuff in HR.
________
Some things an employer typically isn’t allowed to ask that could likely be determined by snooping YouFace.
Age
Marital status / sexual orientation
With whom you live
How many children you have
Pregnancy status
Your child care arrangements
Disabilities, recent illness(es) or operations
Family health history
Arrests
Clubs or social organizations you belong to
Church affiliation
And a whole lot more stuff that they would lose a lawsuit over if they asked you in an interview.
March 23rd, 2012 at 11:14 am
Requiring passwords is already a felony.
Facebook has a EULA, in which you agree not to share your password. Requiring somebody to break a contract (the EULA) isn’t legal.
It is a crime several times over to misrepresent your identity online, and using someone else’s password = identity theft. Theft by extortion is still theft.
Checking somebody else’s account violates anti-stalking laws.
March 23rd, 2012 at 11:32 am
I love having highly salable skills. It’s wonderful to be able to tell a prospective employer, “fuck you, you need me more than I need you.” And then move on to the next interview.
March 23rd, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Yes, it’s an excellent heuristic that you do not want to work for that company.
Dusty: Where’s the reference that breaking a EULA (or asking someone to, rather) is a felony?
And checking their account with their permission is not a misrepresentation or identity theft; posting as them might be misrepresentation, but I’d have to see the statute to see if it’s criminal, given their permission.
Likewise the anti-stalking thing; permission would almost certainly have to override that.
(Indeed, celebrities and politicians have “staff” to “be them” for answering email and twitter and the like – with no reason to believe it’s illegal.)
March 23rd, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Having your real contact info on facebook is just bone stupid regardless.
I have a LinkedIn page and a facebook page with my real info on them. They have nothing but bland stuff I WANT an employer to see, and they all link to an email that I only use for work related stuff.
Any requests for other email addresses or pages will be met with a blank stare.
March 23rd, 2012 at 4:04 pm
Sigivald,
Checking someone else’s account is a misrepresentation to Facebook. Depending on one’s automated settings, an interviewr might be doing the technical equivalent of posting and misrepresenting just by logging in.
Tortious interference of a contract is a crime in my state, but I’d actually have to look up which state Facebook claims has jurisdiction, and then try to skim their state law this weekend.
It isn’t permission if the permission is given under duress.
Citing what politicans and celebrities do, to define what is legal, is weak ground. Tax evasion, drug use, speeding, drunk driving, having the police drive you home after you crash your car while drunk, not registering your pistol in cities that require registration, are some quick examples.
March 23rd, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Dusty: Show me the statute in question, that makes that unlawful misrepresenation, rather than the dictionary use of the term?
(And show me the tortious nature of giving them the login?
Torts require a harm, last I checked – and Facebook is not harmed in the slightest, as far as I can tell – and in any case I suspect a judge looking at a claim like this would ask why the court’s time was being wasted.)
As for misrepresentation, all the laws I can find about it speak only if misrepresentation that gets someone to agree to a contract, nothing more.
So if there’s some statute that makes “logging into a website with the user’s permission but not being that user” illegal, it’s not “misrepresentation” at the generic state level. Nor can I find any computer-crime statutes that would cover that.
Further, there’s no duress in “if you want this job” – duress is an unlawful threat or influence, and it’s not unlawful, as far as I can tell, to ask for a password – because the above things don’t appear to be crimes, thus they’re not asking you to do anything illegal.
(And note that I did not say “those people do it, so it’s legal” – I said “those people do it and nobody suggests it’s illegal”, with the implication that, especially with politicians, there’d be great reason to go after them for points if it was.
When politicians and celebrities DUI and cheat on taxes, they get called on it, or when they get special treatment we get outraged.
This? There’s no crime here.)
Your belief that it is illegal appears to be unique to you under a … novel interpretation of all the laws in question.
Notice that even the ACLU doesn’t try to say it’s unlawful – they just don’t like it. And they have actual lawyers.
March 23rd, 2012 at 6:16 pm
(Sorry about that. Munged an italic close.)
March 23rd, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Someone once told me they weren’t on Facebook because they didn’t want their parents to see what they were up to. I said “If you are ashamed of what you do, and who you are, then change that, or accept it. Or don’t do it in public”.
March 23rd, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Sigivald, there have been some attempts by Federal prosecutors to cast unauthorized accesses – e.g., accesses in violation of TOS – as Federal computer crimes. Not successful yet.
March 24th, 2012 at 1:31 am
there, fixed it.
March 24th, 2012 at 1:31 am
rats